<p>"4500 smart people together seem to come up with some pretty awesome ways to have fun." Yeah, tell that to the folks at Attica.</p>
<p>I think this is how it goes (maybe I'm wrong):</p>
<p>U of Chicago: Where fun goes to die.
Northwestern: Where fun people go to die.
Dartmouth: Where dead people go to have fun.</p>
<p>Slipper, as I tease my son, at Camp Dartmouth there's nothing but 9 class hours/wk to detract from his social life.</p>
<p>"How much of the class at UMichigan, Northwestern or Cornell are in those more obscure majors? Taking Cornell, that I'm more familar with, there's no way more than 1,000 of 3,565 (which seems high to me) of the class are in hotel management or CALS (some of whom will end up pursuing an MBA eventually). However, even throwing out 1,000 of the class out of the calculation, Cornell is still not going to come out better than around where Haverford or Bowdoin comes out ~ 4% of the class."</p>
<p>Actually Gellino, 1,000 out of Cornell's 3,565 graduating class sounds about right. Add to that 1,000 another 1,000 who belong to the colleges of Art/Architecture or Human Ecology and you get more than 50% of Cornell's student body that is simply not likely to even want to apply to Medical, Law or Business graduate programs. That's 2,000 out of 3,600. From my personal observations, the ratio of undergrads interested in those three professional graduate programs at colleges like Dartmouth, Duke or Georgetown and several LACs such as Williams, outnumbers that at more diversified or less pre-professional undergraduate colleges such as Caltech, Chicago, Cornell and Northwestern by a ratio of 2:1. In the case of the elite publics, I would say they outnumber them 3:1.</p>
<p>"Most of the top grad schools are on the East coast. If anything gets shafted in this study, it's the West coast; not the Midwest. Do you really think this survey is going to come out materially different if for MBA programs Stanford, Kellogg, Columbia, UMichigan, Darden are also used and for JD programs, Stanford, NYU, Cal/Berkeley, UVA, UMichigan are also used. I certainly doubt the results would change very much."</p>
<p>I beg to differ. If the survey replaced Sloan with Kellogg and Tuck with Ross and HBS with Stanford Business school and Columbia Law with Stanford Law and Columbia Medical with Michigan Medical, I guarantee you would get a significantly different picture. Why even replace programs. If instead of sticking to the "top 5", the WSJ had surveyed "the top 10" the results would have been more even.</p>
<p>"4500 smart people together seem to come up with some pretty awesome ways to have fun." </p>
<p>Some people on here need to re-read that</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
[quote]
These 3,200 high school seniors are high achieving students that are very much like the CC members that know what the Ivies are and are likely concentrated in the Northeast (despite what they said about seniors "across the country")
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It seems to me that you are the one lying here. Your quote above is your very personal speculation and (not unusually) misguided interpretation of a fact.</p>
<p>Dartmouth wins in cross admits to Northwestern hands down. NU admission office is perfectly aware of this and the statistical model, as presented by the Harvard researchers, holds true.</p>
<p>^Huh? You accused me of "lying" and then said it was my speculation. Since when speculation = lie?? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do you really think this survey is going to come out materially different if for MBA programs Stanford, Kellogg, Columbia, UMichigan, Darden are also used and for JD programs, Stanford, NYU, Cal/Berkeley, UVA, UMichigan are also used. I certainly doubt the results would change very much.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The answer is YES! Absolutely!!!!</p>
<p>Check this out:
Class of 2009 (all programs including MMM, JD, MD, Part-time, 1Y, 2Y) for Kellogg:</p>
<p>Northwestern - 23
Harvard - 12
Princeton - 11
Yale - 5
Brown - 5
Dartmouth - 9
Cornell - 11
UPENN - 19
Columbia - 13
Chicago - 6
Duke - 14
Michigan - 18
Stanford - 15</p>
<p>
[quote]
Here is an objective study where Dartmouth significantly outperforms Northwestern. Sure, they maybe should have used the top 10 schools instead of top 5 in each discipline and should have continued measuring this over more than one year, but it is doubtful that the results would have really been much different.</p>
<p>Aside from CalTech, that doesn't really fit into this type of study with 37% going on to get a PhD, I had long considered these to be the top 12 schools long before this study was ever published.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Please stop citing the WSJ survey. I'm very surprised that intelligent people still try to draw conclusions from it despite obvious HUGE flaws with the methodology.</p>
<p>And, yes, changing the schools used for the survey would change the results...alot. For example, using Penn or WashU med school instead of Columbia or Yale Med School would absolutely change the percentages in favor of Penn and WashU. There are HUGE fluctuations in yearly enrollments in med, law, and business school. For example, at Michigan Med School, you can expect 30+ from UMich but maybe only 2-3 from Yale. While at Yale Med School, you may see 20+ from Yale but only 1-2 from Umich.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually Gellino, 1,000 out of Cornell's 3,565 graduating class sounds about right. Add to that 1,000 another 1,000 who belong to the colleges of Art/Architecture or Human Ecology and you get more than 50% of Cornell's student body that is simply not likely to even want to apply to Medical, Law or Business graduate programs. That's 2,000 out of 3,600.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Except that some of the Hotel school and CALS are going to aspire to an MBA at some point and have known people from the Human Ecology school get an MBA and JD as well; so I think it's a little simplistic to say that half the school isn't interested in a professional graduate degree.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I beg to differ. If the survey replaced Sloan with Kellogg and Tuck with Ross and HBS with Stanford Business school and Columbia Law with Stanford Law and Columbia Medical with Michigan Medical, I guarantee you would get a significantly different picture. Why even replace programs. If instead of sticking to the "top 5", the WSJ had surveyed "the top 10" the results would have been more even.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If you read what I said, I suggested making the WSJ survey the top 10 schools in each discipline, not replacing the existing five.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Please stop citing the WSJ survey. I'm very surprised that intelligent people still try to draw conclusions from it despite obvious HUGE flaws with the methodology.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is still better than any other study on the subject. I'm surprised they haven't tried to continue doing it over ongoing years.</p>
<p>"It is still better than any other study on the subject. I'm surprised they haven't tried to continue doing it over ongoing years."</p>
<p>I actually agree with you there. It is a good start, but it is very shallow. Like I said, the survey should include more programs (trop 10 programs), more disciplines (Engineering, PhD programs in the main traditional disciplines such as Bio, Chem, Econ, English, Physics, PoliSci etc...) and should take into consideration the number of applicants from each college and their credentials.</p>
<p>^exactly. i seriously doubt prof school admission is going to choose one over another simply because of the name when the two candidates have nearly identical stats. traditionally, dartmouth incoming class had noticeably higher stats and it would make sense that more of them had scored higher on LSAT, MCAT, or GMAT which result in higher representation. that is, the survey did not control for students stats and it's unclear whether it's dartmouth that helps students or it's students that get in with their own talents. these days, the two schools have almost the same stats.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm surprised they haven't tried to continue doing it over ongoing years.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps bcos its so flawed? :D</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is still better than any other study on the subject. I'm surprised they haven't tried to continue doing it over ongoing years.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It is probably the ONLY study on the subject (and I use the term 'study' loosely). It is extremely difficult to do this study because you must separate the intrinsic abilities of the students from the advantages offered by the schools. I'm inclined to believe that the top 20 or 25 colleges essentially offer the same resources for professional school admissions. Entrance into law school is a function of your LSAT score (which itself is a function of your natural logical and critical thinking abilities). Any top college can provide the small classrooms, the research opportunities, etc. for someone to get into med school. If you look at med school acceptance rates released by various colleges, they generally follow student quality. Hence, Yale isn't better than Penn at getting its students into med or law school. Their students are just better in the first place. </p>
<p>This goes hand in hand with the nature of professional school admissions. Professional schools aren't looking for any kind of knowledge. You can major in art history and still go to med, law, or business school. Med, law, and business schools are essentially looking for the same thing: potential, manifested in the student's critical thinking ability. Some of that ability is established in college but most is established well before college. The kind of people always citing the WSJ survey (and perpetuating the myth that one top school is better than another at getting someone into professional schools) tend to be proponents of schools with sucky grad departments. They feel that since the actual academic depts are so weak, the only way they can bolster their school is by making the argument that their schools are tailored for the professional fields (and hence justifying why their school lacks respect in academia).</p>
<p>^I don't interpret the WSJ survey so much as the college getting the students into these grad programs as I do a measure of what colleges the smartest students tend to congregate. </p>
<p>
[quote]
The kind of people always citing the WSJ survey (and perpetuating the myth that one top school is better than another at getting someone into professional schools) tend to be proponents of schools with sucky grad departments. They feel that since the actual academic depts are so weak, the only way they can bolster their school is by making the argument that their schools are tailored for the professional fields (and hence justifying why their school lacks respect in academia).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So you're saying I'm supposed to pretend the students at Dartmouth and Williams are dumber than the ones at UWisconsin and UIllinois because the former have limited to no graduate programs in many disciplines? How do you propose measuring the strength of an UG academic dept? Certainly, the quality of the students in the classrooms and % of classes taught by full professors should be part of the formula as opposed to solely the number of grants received and research citations awarded, which contributes very little to learning the fundamentals in a major.</p>
<p>Woah, Ivy League supporters, double standards much?</p>
<p>Blah blah has bad graduate schools, thus blah blah is not as prestigious and not as good.</p>
<p>
[quote]
^I don't interpret the WSJ survey so much as the college getting the students into these grad programs as I do a measure of what colleges the smartest students tend to congregate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why do you need the WSJ study for that? Are acceptance rates and average SAT scores not enough?</p>
<p>
[quote]
So you're saying I'm supposed to pretend the students at Dartmouth and Williams are dumber than the ones at UWisconsin and UIllinois because the former have limited to no graduate programs in many disciplines? How do you propose measuring the strength of an UG academic dept? Certainly, the quality of the students in the classrooms and % of classes taught by full professors should be part of the formula as opposed to solely the number of grants received and research citations awarded, which contributes very little to learning the fundamentals in a major.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If you reread my post, my comments relate to splitting hairs b/w top schools (like what this thread is trying to do) rather than comparing Dartmouth to Wisconsin. I'm saying that there is no difference in the undergrad quality b/w top schools (loosely defined as the top 20 schools in the rankings) while there is huge difference in the graduate quality b/w top schools. That's not to say a student would be equally successful at Northwestern and Dartmouth. For some students, Dartmouth would be a better fit. For some students, Northwestern would be a better fit. But, you can't simply make the assertion that Yale is better than Penn or that Northwestern is better than Dartmouth (or vice-versa).</p>
<p>^ </p>
<p>Heed a voice of reason</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To some extent, you have a point but please note that:
1. the quality of students are very much on par; are you trying to split hairs with the 10-20 point difference in SAT? (FYI: NU has higher ACT--so wouldn't that balance things out??)
2. Classes at Northwestern are virtually all taught by professors, as in many top private resarch Us. The TAs don't give lectures; they lead discussion or lab sections which are NOT lectures. I don't know why some people on this board seem to like perpectuating the idea that TAs lecture in ALL research universities.</p>
<p>Now, I'll give you that the profs are generally more accessible outside of classes at Dartmouth. But NU has larger array of courses and more majors (for OP that's interested in business, there's nothing like Kellogg certificate or management sciences major offered at Dartmouth). Each has its own pros and cons. It's all about fit and what the candidate wants.</p>
<p>norcalguy, thanks for your nice posts!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If your s/n was nor'eastguy, you certainly could (and probably would) make the vice-versa assertion. :D</p>
<p>I would just like to say that school name does matter for professional school admissions. The people who say it doesn't matter at all are incorrect. Coming from a Cornell or a Harvard or Dartmouth or NU can get you an interview at a med school or an acceptance at a law school over similarly qualified students from other schools. I interviewed at 6-7 out of the top 20 med schools in the country and at each interview, there was a heavy representation of students from top colleges. In fact, I looked over my current med school's roster and 70% of the matriculating class came from a top 20 college. </p>
<p>However, I think people make way too big a deal over differences within the Top 20. Cornell vs. Duke. Dartmouth vs. Northwestern. Seriously. Law school admissions require almost nothing. Armed with a top college degree and a high LSAT score you can get in anywhere. My friend with a so-so GPA from G-town and a 172 LSAT got into 6 out of the top 10 law schools in the nation. I attended Cornell for college. If there was one college that you might think would be bad for premed, it might be Cornell. Yet, I can tell you the professors were very accessible (sometimes begging us to come to office hours). The classes were challenging but fair. I never had a TA teach a class (except for one writing seminar). There were oodles of research opps and clinical opportunities (Cornell even helped match me to two physicians to shadow so I didn't have to cold call a bunch of strangers). The connections I made with a professor at Cornell helped secure a research internship for the summer. Our premed adviser is amazingly knowledgeable and attends premed conferences yearly to keep abreast of the current happenings in med school admissions. She went over how to fill out the med school application page by page a month before it came out. I see no reason why Cornell would be an inferior premed school to Harvard or Duke or any other top 20 school. And I know med school admissions inside and out. So, the people who say that one top school is better than another simply don't understand professional school admissions.</p>